TECHNOLOGY TODAY

Prior to the start of the Fall semester, CUNY announced an expanded “Microsoft Office 365 for Education” suite for activefaculty and staff members. The new offerings include OneDrivefor Business, SharePoint, Yammer and Skype for Business, which provide cloud solutions for storing, sharing, and synching filesfrom a variety of devices. OneDrive for Business, for example, allows you to update and share files from multiple devices andwork collaboratively on a document at the same time. Users alsoreceive 1 TB of free storage.

In order to protect data from unauthorized access, users should review the new policy for the Acceptable Use of Microsoft Office365 for Education prior to using these cloud solutions. This policy was drafted by CUNY’s Cloud Advisory Group and is summarized on www.cuny.edu/office365ed, a site devoted to Microsoft Office 365 that provides FAQs and links to Microsoftvideo tutorials.

You can access Microsoft Office 365 for Education solutionsthrough this new site, or by clicking on the Microsoft Office 365for Education icon on CUNY’s faculty Technology Service page,login.microsoftonline.com, or portal.office.com. You then log inwith your CUNY Login credentials (your CUNYfirst username@login.cuny.edu, e.g., Jane.Doe99@login.cuny.edu, andyour CUNYfirst password). Faculty members who are not in CUNYfirst (e.g., some RF employees) may not have CUNY Logincredentials and may wish to contact their college Help Desk forassistance.

The Cloud Advisory group continues to explore other collaborationtools including Google and Dropbox for CUNY use.

Please direct any questions to your college Help Desk.

New Accessibility Training on Blackboard

Faculty will notice a new Accessibility Training tab when they loginto Blackboard. This tab continues CUNY’s commitment to making content accessible for the entire CUNY community, including those with various abilities. The tab currently containsthree modules and will be expanded as more training is developedand published.

First is a link to a new Blackboard course on creating accessibleBlackboard courses. This course was created by CUNY faculty atthe School of Professional Studies for CUNY faculty. It is self-paced and entirely online. It instructs faculty on the many ways tomake online courses and materials accessible to all students, including accessibility of Blackboard, Microsoft Office and PDFdocuments, multimedia, and materials from publishers.

A second module provides eight video recordings from an accessi-bility training course for content developers. The videos containinformation on making websites and documents compliant withaccessibility guidelines.

The tab also points users to general accessibility informationabout CUNY and Blackboard accessibility and provides a contacte-mail for questions or comments about accessibility.

September 2018 |

New Microsoft Cloud Storage and Collaboration Tools The theme addresses such questions as: 1. How does technology provide challenges and opportunities formultiple stakeholders at CUNY and across the varied sectors ofteaching, learning, research, and administration?

2. How do educators perceive the challenges and opportunities oftechnology in the classroom? And how do they balance them?

3. How can technology create new opportunities for students?What challenges does technology present that may also be viewedas opportunities for teaching and learning?

Key note speakers are Anya Kamenetz, Educational Futurist/LeadEducation Reporter on Day 1, and Stephen Brier, Senior Aca-demic Technology Officer/Professor, PhD Program in Urban Edu-cation / Co-Director, New Media Lab, The Graduate School andUniversity Center, CUNY on Day 2.

You can find more information or register (free to education professionals)at the CUNY IT Conference Registration Site.

Upcoming CUNY IT Conference The 17th annual CUNY IT Conference will take place on Novem-ber 29-30, 2018 at John Jay College. The theme this year is“Technology and Education: Challenges and Opportunities,” exploring the complicated balances in using technology in highereducation.

Brian Cohen, Vice Chancellor & Chief Information Officer

Computing and Information ServicesNew CUNY Initiatives Supporting Academia

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Technology Services at Your FingertipsFaculty can find in one location all applications and services thatare offered CUNY-wide. The new Faculty Technology Services pagelists all services (such as Blackboard, DegreeWorks, FACTS, andthe library) and provides a log-in link and additional informationfor each. This site also provides links to Training Resources (forCUNYfirst, Blackboard and campus trainings), as well as informa-tion on CUNY Site Licenses and Service Maintenance Windows.

The Technology Services page can also be accessed from theFaculty Services page on www.cuny.edu. Separate TechnologyServices tabs exist for students and staff.

Significant Milestones for CUNYfirst in 2018 This past April, the last phase of schools – the Graduate Center,the Graduate School of Journalism, Macaulay Honors College andthe CUNY BA Program – began using CUNYfirst Campus Solu-tions. These additions marked a significant milestone with thecompletion of all modules in the original CUNYfirst scope of work.Since then, the full CUNYfirst Admissions implementation forfreshmen enrolling for Spring 2019 completed in June and thenew CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies was added to CUNYfirst in July.

For faculty, CUNYfirst provides a single way to view and manageclass schedules, rosters, grades, exams and advisory services,whether for one or multiple colleges. For students, there is a single system to manage their CUNY transactions and records,from applying to college, to enrolling each semester, to graduatingand everything in between. For staff, there is now a single andconsistent approach to viewing and managing academic and business information and transactions across the university.

As the university’s system of record for academic and businesstransactions, CUNYfirst also provides a single data source that canbe used with complementary applications and services, including:• Global Search — allows students to find relevant classes acrossthe CUNYfirst course catalogs• Virtual Bookstore — displays the students’ courses from CUNY-first and assigned materials • CUNY Alert — delivers emergency messages through communi-cation preferences set in CUNYfirst • CUNYsmart — incorporates CUNYfirst data in business analysisand reporting queries• DegreeWorks — loads courses and grades from CUNYfirst• MyInfo — an alternative to CUNYfirst for looking up essentialstudent and faculty data

A review of business requirements for implementing new CUNY-first finance and benefits modules as well as other enhancementsis under way.

Expansion of Virtual BookstoreCUNY’s Virtual Bookstore, operated by Akademos, continues to expand. This past spring, two additional colleges (School of Professional Studies and Bronx Community College) transitionedto the CUNY Virtual B-ookstore service in time for the Summer2018 term. This brings to 14 the total number of colleges now

using the CUNY Virtual Bookstore. The Graduate Center, CraigNewmark Graduate School of Journalism, Macaulay Honors College, and the School for Labor and Urban Studies are alsoplanning to use the virtual bookstore in time for the Spring 2019term.

CUNY also worked with Akademos to develop an option for OpenEducational Resources (OER) and a building block presence onBlackboard so that students can see the books they need whenthey sign on to an online course. In addition to OER-based resources, the platform also contains a CoursePack Creator andCourse Materials Recommendation Engine to assist faculty. Additionally, links to Akademos’ site are integrated on the Student/Faculty Self-Service and Class Schedule pages in CUNYfirst.

New Functions in DegreeWorks DegreeWorks contains new functions since the tool was upgradedin August 2017 and integrated with single sign-on. The StudentEducational Planner, deployed at the time of upgrade, displayscourses planned to be taken in the upcoming and future semes-ters. In addition, the Advisor Administrator Tool, which enablesthe college DegreeWorks Coordinators to assign specific securityroles to their advisors, launched in spring 2018.

Next, CUNY plans to launch the new Transfer Finder “What If?”feature, which evaluates how completed courses meet degree requirements at another CUNY college to support transfer and theReverse Transfer Initiative. This feature is currently scheduled forinitial release for the Spring 2019 term.

Since the tool was upgraded, CUNY has continued to work collaboratively with all DegreeWorks coordinators and Ellucian,which created DegreeWorks, resolving defects and performance issues as they arise and to fully integrate DegreeWorks into theUniversity’s operations.

See your CUNY Alerts immediately by registering for SMS/Text messages! Find out about campus and office closures, severeweather advisories, or emergency police activity via alerts on yourphone. To update your CUNY Alert Information:• Log in to CUNYfirst• Select “CUNY Alert Preferences” under CUNYfirst menu• Enable “Text” for the phone option• Click “Update Information” to save

For more information on CUNY Alert, visit www.cuny.edu/alert .

Blackboard Usage Hits All-Time HighBlackboard usage has grown steadily and reached a record high atthe start of the Fall 2018 term. A peak of 136,522 unique loginsin a single day was reported on 9/4/18. This number exceeds allprior usage levels for any given day in prior semesters. Previouspeak logins were 133,531 in the Spring 2018 term and 131,447in the Fall 2017 term.

We welcome your comments and ideas fornew initiatives at cisfeedback@cuny.edu